Cardiff Quays BTR site and school visit

Matt and Niamh from the ESG and Business development team recently spent two days in Cardiff visiting the Cardiff Quays site, and delivering an Enterprise Challenge to students at Cardiff West High School.

Cardiff Quays is a 718 apartment Build to Rent (BTR) development on the old Brains Brewery site, right next to the Principality Stadium. They spent he first day touring the site, filming some footage for the new company video and interviewing one of Kimpton’s newest apprentices about his experiences so far.

On Wednesday, they began their social value work, spending the day working with Cardiff West’s year 7 students to talk to them about the renewable technologies used in buildings. They were then tasked with building a model of their school out of recycled cardboard and plastic using as many as possible. With their models completed, they then presented them to the rest of the year and explained which they had used and why!

Part of the social value role is to help attract a more diverse work force into construction and so they also discussed the careers opportunities in building services engineering, the salaries on offer and explained the apprenticeship route into the construction industry. We have found that being open and honest with them about the money available within the industry, does tend to make them sit up and take notice.

We’re always pleased to support our client’s social value goals and we’ve been working closely with Watkin Jones Group to ensure we deliver as much economic and social impact to the local community as possible through local supply chain spend and initiatives such as these.

Speaking about the visit, Matt Breakwell, Kimpton ESG and Business Development Director said “Thanks to the team at Watkin Jones for the welcome and to Adrian Cole and the team at Careers Wales for connecting us with Cardiff West High School. It was great to see how excited and engaged the students were, all helped by the fantastic support Niamh Smith and I received from Rhys Pritchard and his teaching colleagues to deliver the challenge!”